Thereās nothing more annoying on Twitch than being hit by advertisements one after another while youāre trying to channel surf.
The platformās growing emphasis on advertisements has increasingly impeded the viewing experience, but during a panel at TwitchCon today, execs gave us hope for a better future.
Donāt worry, youāll still be hit with advertisements, but if Twitchās current experiments work as intended, maybe they wonāt be quite so cumbersome. Among other things, the platform is working to create a browsing experience that lets viewers hop from stream to stream without getting hit by pre-roll ads every time they change channels.
The platformās chief product officer Tom Verrilli said that a recent experiment giving some viewers this experience could drive growth.
āThat work is very explicitly designed to both help new viewers and smaller streamers grow,ā Verrilli said. āWhat we want to do is lower the cost of exploring and sampling and finding new streamers.ā
According to the platformās vice president of monetization Mike Minton, eradicating pre-roll ads in situations where viewers are checking out creators for the first time.
In the long-term, Minton hinted at moving away from pre-roll ad experiences. He also mentioned that making ads skippable could be on the horizon, but donāt expect to see skippable ads on the platform anytime soon. The platform doesnāt have any dates or timeline for skippable ads.
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āWeāve been prioritizing ad breaks over pre-rolls,ā Minton said. āCertainly in a pre-roll format you want a skippable ad ā¦ but our overall strategy is to reduce pre-rolls so skippable ads kind of fall down the list [of priorities].ā
Additionally, Minton noted that the platform is working to provide creators with ways to mitigate the negative impact a scheduled ad can have on the flow of a stream.
āI understand youāre not all in the dashboard as you’re streaming,ā he said. āYouāre often in other tools so we have good ideas to help you understand an ad break is running.ā
On the viewer side of things, Minton mentioned that in the ānear termā the platform will start to introduce ways that users can effectively āsnoozeā an ad break if thereās something going on during a stream that people wonāt want to miss.
While there wasnāt a timeline given for any ad-related changes on Twitch, the sentiment toward optimizing the user experience is one that some fans have called for after the platform intensified incentives for creators to run more ads.
Among the chorus of those criticizing the platformās ad experience was Ludwig, who posted a 10-minute video to YouTube claiming Twitch was ākilling their website.ā
Published: Oct 9, 2022 11:43 pm